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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

New Right strategy – Take power by controlling the narrative

The only political party linked to organized ‘voter fraud’ in 2012 was the one loudly denouncing it....

As [Richard] Viguerie has explained, over the decades, and as part of its long term strategy to take power, the New Right has built a net- work of alternative media outlets, think tanks, political operatives and elected officials, the likes of which progressives cannot begin to match. And it’s why they control the national conversation.

In These TimesThe New Right’s Rabid Watchdog
Joel Bleifuss | former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor & publisher of In These Times

These are also some of the neoliberal forces aligned against increasing policy space and therefore MMT. And they control the narrative at present. It's not all on the right either. Pete Peterson is a New Democrat, and he has been just as active for decades, too. Now it is paying off.

Meanwhile, the left is asleep at the switch as the New Deal crumbles under the assault, lead especially by the assault on organized labor. The economic dynamic is between ownership, with management the minions of ownership, and labor. Distribution of productivity gains over the past several decades reveals graphically who is winning. This chart illustrating the productivity-compensation gap says it all.

8 comments:

Problem is the current GOP/Right narrative is a losing narrative... they can never win with it. And it at core is not economic it is "values" ie social Darwinism.

But over in the Democrat Party this thing that Krugman is doing taking on Peterson is a civil war that has to be waged by Democrats imo...

It will be interesting to see if it continues... agree the "Fort Sumter" shots might have been fired this past weekend in the NYT op-ed pages with Rattner going on Saturday and then Krugman firing back on Sunday...

That graph speaks to who's winning as much as anything I've seen. I'm just not sure a significant counter narrative can be conceived in time to save the day. Too much conditioning to overcome. Going be a long, frustrating slog to change.

The political right always has been organized but not nearly as organized and more importantly institutionalized as the left.

The real threat to democracy isn't media outlets like Rush or Fox or MSNBC but the public & private media, public schools and universities. They continue to teach outdated econ orthodoxy every single day in most institutions -- that is the real source of subversive material. As for subversive media outlets I offer as an example, Diane Rehm one of the most liberal of all NPR shows: she does a deficit hysteria show at least once a week where the only real solution her guests propose is to cut medicare/SS -- she whips up the passions of millions of listeners every single week. Of course Peterson, Koch and Soros need to be watched too but media outlets tied to one bias or another do NOT have a monopoly on clinging to old economic orthodoxy of the type found in 'good' old Krugman econ text books. People believe it because it is what they are being taught through formal channels -- not informal wing nut outlets. It is only recently Krugman has begun to adopt MMT insights as his own -- after years of denying the validity and mocking the messengers. Maybe he will update his text book examples in the next version!

I read this blog so much and I constantly get sucked in with repetition to thinking in these stale liberal indoctrinations and into the paranoia about the right. I live in Texas, heartland of Republican culture and am friends with many people that I assume are Republicans, and I can assure you they vote for Republicans for the regular old simple reasons, such as jobs, taxes and education and not for some crazed racist and greed driven agenda. They vote republican because they think Republicans offer a more hopeful vision of a future that they want to exist. They think the democrat solutions and policies are as inane stupid and unenlightened as you do theirs. Their goals and understanding of the world simply differ from yours. Because we don't like that vision or think it is wrong doesn't mean they are controlling the narrative or committing fraud. Krugman, Schliefer, Heckman, Bernanke, Mankiw, Stiglitz, Lucas, Rogoff and their ilk control the agenda and curriculum and responsibility for failure of their brand of economics. I suspect if most Americans of both parties were taught MMT in schools we wouldn't have deficit hysteria.

I suspect if most Americans of both parties were taught MMT in schools we wouldn't have deficit hysteria.

Right, the New Democrats and Old and New Left are also in the mix big-time.

Yet, Bruce Bartlett and David Frum converging on Krugman show that progress is possible. Of course, now Krugman needs to purge himself of Samuelson's bastard Keynesianism and dump ISLM-loanable funds, and get with Old Keynesianism > Post Keynesianism. But a trend is finally emerging in the mainstream at long last.

Diane Rehm one of the most liberal of all NPR shows: she does a deficit hysteria show at least once a week where the only real solution her guests propose is to cut medicare/SS -- she whips up the passions of millions of listeners every single week

Can't say that surprises me. Around 2002 one of the Oregon NPR affiliates had Rehm on as a guest for their morning talk show. Rehm was asked by a caller why it was that she had so many guests from right wing think tanks on her show. Rehm's response: "Well, the conservatives are in power, so it's in the public interest to know what their plans for us are."